Iconic Brands & The Case of Barbie
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The document provides an outline for a presentation on whether Barbie, the iconic doll, is past her prime. It begins with background on Barbie's creation in the 1950s to address the desire of little girls to be bigger girls. It then reviews literature on iconic brands and how Barbie addressed cultural contradictions as the second wave of feminism emerged. The hypothesis is that Barbie remains iconic for a certain type of female but her current situation and brand may need updates. Research methodology analyzes perceptions of Barbie lovers versus detractors. Results find detractors value authenticity over perfection while lovers seek the latter. The conclusion is that Barbie is no longer universally iconic as society and consumers have changed, so brand recommendations focus on
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Iconic Brands & The Case of Barbie
- 1. Is The World’s Most Iconic Doll Past Her Prime? by Naye Moussa Supervisor: Ramón Méndez
- 2. Outline of Presentation • Background: The World’s Most Iconic Doll • Literature Review: Iconic Brands & The Case of Barbie • Hypothesis: Barbie’s Current Situation • Methodology, Analysis, & Results • Discussion: Brand Recommendations
- 3. “I am humbled by the thought that we could have had that much influence, and yet I know that we did.” Ruth Handler, mother and creator of Barbie Chapter I: Background The World’s Most Iconic Doll
- 4. Doll Market in 1950s America Baby Dolls Glamour Dolls Paper Dolls “[Barbara and her friends] would sit and carry on conversations, making the dolls real people...I used to watch that over and over and think: if only we could take this play pattern and three-dimensionalize it, we would have something very special.” -Ruth Handler
- 5. Barbie is Born “In analyzing Barbie, Dichter interviewed 191 girls and 45 mothers... Mothers, it turned out, hated the doll, but not their daughters. ‘He interviewed girls about what they wanted in a doll,’ Dichter’s wife said. ‘It turns out that what they wanted was someone sexy looking, someone they wanted to grow up to be like. Long legs, big breasts, glamorous.” (Gerber, 2009) “Watching children play with the doll, we concluded that little girls saw Barbie as the young woman they wanted to be someday. Ruth had always believed that the doll’s play value rested in girls’ fantasies about growing up. (Gerber, 2009)
- 6. Little Girls Just Wanted to be Big Girls “Over and over, with fierce confidence, Ruth had told those who doubted her idea that little girls just wanted to be bigger girls.” And she was right. •300,000 Barbie dolls were sold in 1959 alone •1 Barbie doll is sold every 3 seconds somewhere in the world in over 150 countries •90% of girls ages 3-10 own at least 1 Barbie doll •Girls ages 3-6 own an average of 12 Barbie dolls •Barbie is the number 1 doll property in the United States and the number 1 worldwide property in the traditional toy industry
- 7. “Barbie has morphed into a legend & an icon. For Barbie is both mirror & model, reflection & avatar. Yona Zeldis McDonough, New York Times Chapter II: Literature Review Iconic Brands & The Case of Barbie
- 8. What Are Iconic Brands? Cultural icons are “exemplary symbols that people accept as shorthand to represent important ideas.” “Consumers flock to brands that embody the ideals they admire, brands that help them express who they want to be. The most successful of these brands become iconic brands.”
- 9. The Name of the Game is Culture Share “The name of the game is symbolism: The strategic focus is on what the brand stands for, not on how it performs. And it’s the only form of competition that yields icons.” Culture Share Mind Share Cultural/Societal Understanding Consumer Understanding
- 10. Sources Used to Study Barbie’s Iconicity Holt’s Cultural Branding Model, What is an Iconic Brand excerpt taken from The Principles of Cultural Branding (Holt, Harvard Business School, 2008) Brand Meaning Resonance Model, When Brands Resonate chapter taken from Handbook on Brand and Experience Management (Fournier, Solomon, & Englis, 2009)
- 11. The Common Characteristics of Iconic Brands Iconic Brands Cultural Personal Address Cultural Contradictions, Meaning Opposition
- 12. Cultural Contradictions & Meaning Opposition “Before Barbie, most dolls resembled infants, and little girls played at mothering them. With Barbie, the object of the game changed.” (Forman-Brunell, 2014) Girls ☛ Little girls just wanted to be big girls Women “To first generation Barbie owners, of which I was one, Barbie was a revelation. She didn’t teach us to nurture...she taught us independence. Barbie was her own woman.”(Stone, 2010) 1960s America: second wave of feminism hit + Barbie was a reflection of glamorous post-war America “Our mothers grew up thinking they could be a stewardess. Barbie came along and said, ‘You can be the pilot.’”(Stone, 2010)
- 13. “They saw her [Barbie] as a symbol of empowerment. On the occasion of Barbie’s birthday, M.G. Lord, author of Forever Barbie, said, “I think Barbie really was in a lot of ways the first feminist. She kind of pointed the way out of the kitchen for little girls.” And Ruth Handler - the inventor of Barbie and founding mother of her maker, Mattel, said, “Barbie has always represented the fact that a woman has choices.” (Stone, 2010, p. 7).
- 14. The Common Characteristics of Iconic Brands Iconic Brands Cultural Personal Address Cultural Contradictions, Meaning Opposition Compelling Identity Myth & Self Connection Personal Co-creation
- 15. Identity Myth, Self Connection, Co-Creation Barbie’s identity myth: Girls can be and do anything, and she exudes this through a perfect dream life Barbie is “a doll that becomes whatever a girl wants her to be...No single interpretation seems to define her. Barbie exists as a reflection of the hopes and dreams of the girls who play with her.” (Forman-Brunell, 2001) “The truth is we need Barbie dolls for grown ups, too. All our lives would be enriched having a fantasy doll we could strip naked and dress in our own dreams.” (McDonough, 2011) “She was all that we could be...And certainly more than we were” (Lord, 1994) Girls Women
- 16. The Common Characteristics of Iconic Brands Iconic Brands Cultural Personal Address Cultural Contradictions, Meaning Opposition Compelling Identity Myth & Self Connection Personal Co-creation Populist World
- 17. The Common Characteristics of Iconic Brands Iconic Brands Cultural Personal Address Cultural Contradictions, Meaning Opposition Compelling Identity Myth & Self Connection Personal Co-creation Populist World Experience Identity Myth Through Ritual Action & Interdependecy Speak with a Rebel’s Voice
- 18. Barbie: A Rebel Of Her Time • In the 1960s: Barbie went the moon as an astronaut (4 years before Neil Armstrong) •In the 1980s: Barbie took to the board room as CEO (just as women began breaking into those leadership roles) •In the 1990s: Barbie ran for president before any female candidate even made it onto the presidential ballot “To her credit, Barbie stepped into the shoes of president eight years before Hilary Clinton ran for that office...Barbie had gone into space just four years after the first male astronaut did and eighteen years before Sally Ride became the first American woman to go into space.” (Stone, 2010)
- 19. The Common Characteristics of Iconic Brands Iconic Brands Cultural Personal Address Cultural Contradictions, Meaning Opposition Compelling Identity Myth & Self Connection Personal Co-creation Populist World Experience Identity Myth Through Ritual Action & Interdependecy Speak with a Rebel’s Voice Currency Value
- 20. Does Barbie’s Meaning Have Currency Value?
- 21. The Challenge for Brands to Stay Iconic When ideology shifts, we see new icons take off and incumbents struggle to stay relevant...When the national ideology crumbles and is then reinvented, new contradictions form. It’s a window of opportunity for would-be icons, but it’s bad news for existing ones.” “Strong brands are built upon strong meanings.The corollary is a straightforward one: brands die when their meanings lose significance in consumer’s lives.” (Fournier et, al, 2009)
- 22. “One of the greatest paradoxes of branding is that you must keep changing to remain consistent. Mattel appears to be losing the struggle to keep Barbie contemporary.” The Blake Project, a LA based consultancy Chapter III: Hypothesis Barbie’s Current Situation
- 23. Barbie is Having a Mid-Life Crisis 12% ➡ gross sales (North America segment)2013: 4% ➡ gross sales (North America segment) 2012: 3% ➡ gross sales (International segment) 4% ➡Mattel’s gross sales (due to lower sales in certain brands, one of them being Barbie) ☛ *Taken from Mattel’s 2012 and 2013 Annual Reports
- 24. Barbie: A Prisoner Of Her Past? “Barbie remains immune to the ravages of time.” Weissman, “Barbie: The Image, The Icon, The Ideal” BUT *Taken from Mattel’s 2012 and 2013 Annual Reports Barbie’s message is the same as it was in 1959 “In 2014, Barbie will help girls discover that anything is possible...Barbie will also continue to celebrate her aspirational career heritage wit the ‘I Can Be’ line.”* AND WE KNOW that to remain iconic, brands & their meanings must stay relevant & tend to consumer’s personal and cultural anxieties, or else they will eventually die out from the market ☛ is this what is happening to Barbie?
- 25. Hypothesis Barbie remains iconic, but only for a certain type of female Personal *Taken from Mattel’s 2012 and 2013 Annual Reports Cultural
- 26. “For every mother that embraces Barbie...there is another mother who tries to banish Barbie from the house. M.G. Lorde, author of Forever Barbie: The Unauthorized Biography of a Real Doll Chapter IV: Methodology & Results
- 27. Aims & Objectives 1.Understand Barbie as perceived by the consumer 2.Understand what discriminates Barbie lovers from Barbie detractors 3.Explore if Barbie is iconic in certain societies more than in others
- 28. Data Collection & Sample Quantitative In-depth Interviews Qualitative Online Survey Sample: 15 mothers (lovers and detractors) with daughters of any age Sample: 203 females of all ages 6: Middle East 9: Europe & USA Ages Cultural Background
- 29. Barbie Lovers Perfection Appearance Oriented/ Appease Opposite Sex Status Seekers Social Acceptance Dreamers
- 30. Barbie Detractors Authenticity Goal Oriented, Not Appearance Oriented Unconcerned with Status Nontraditional Realists
- 31. Ideals of Beauty & Perfection: A Paradigm Shift “When it came to the ideals of women and beauty in the 1950s, the standards were pinup girls and movie stars...Blonde, busty actresses Betty Grable and Jayne Mansfield were known for their looks. When the first issue of Playboy magazine came out in December 1953, it featured Marilyn Monroe on the cover and as a centerfold...All these factors affected how she [Ruth] wanted her doll to look.” (Stone, 2010) 1960s 2010s Dove Campaign for Real Beauty Latest campaign: “Isn’t it time to redefine beauty?” Sales today: $4B vs. $2.5B in 2005 perfection authenticity
- 32. An Interesting Finding on Detractors The difference between the two detractors: childhood memories Lovers vs. Detractors Detractors Who Would Buy Barbie for their Daughters
- 34. So Is Barbie Iconic?
- 36. “Love it or hate it, Barbie has been embodying ideal femininity for 40 years.” Carol Ockman, The Barbie Chronicles Chapter V: Discussion Brand Recommendations
- 37. Move From Iconic Brand to Well Targeted Brand Barbie can do 2 things change Revolution update Evolution Barbie will NOT speak to everyone It is about doing the right thing for the right target Barbie is Barbie Barbie’s DNA: perfection and dreams
- 38. Barbie is embracing the shift from iconic brand to a well targeted brand Barbie will continue to speak to her lovers as she’s always done, and they will continue to love her just the way she is: perfect
- 39. Barbie’s Target Consumer Purchaser Girls 3-9 years old Mothers detractors & lovers willing to buy build desire encourage acceptance & purchase branding strategy catered to both ⇊
- 40. Barbie Has a Branding Problem, Not a Product Problem Brand Equity Problem Brand Awareness Brand Image
- 41. An Image of the Past Respondents Who Have Seen a Barbie Advertisement in the Past 3 Months
- 42. Barbie’s Portfolio Awareness is Low Awareness of Stereotypical Roles Awareness of Non-Stereotypical Roles
- 43. Barbie Has a Branding Problem, Not a Product Problem Brand Equity Problem Brand Awareness Brand Image 1. create communication that makes sense for mothers & girls 2. create positive brand image and perceptions
- 44. Barbie is Taking Steps to Change Image with Mothers aspirational vs. unrealistic adored vs. forbidden imaginative vs. limiting
- 45. Mothers: The Doll that Evolves With You “It is part of childhood to play with dolls like Barbie and its a fun toy to play with as a young girl, even though she is not the perfect model for my daughter to follow.” I have great memories of playing Barbie with my sister. I believe we used our imaginations and enjoyed them a lot. While Barbie’s image is unrealistic, I believe my daughter would enjoy using the doll to create imaginary worlds like we did.” ☛ Barbie evolved together with you, and will continue to evolve with you and into your daughter’s life, too.
- 46. Girls: Dream and Grow make believe, outdated perfection ➜ real, updated perfection
- 47. A Message for Moms & Girls The Doll That Evolves With Your Dreams nostalgia Barbie, the doll that evolves with you and defends your dreams GirlsMothers realistic, updated perfection ⇊
- 48. A Message for Moms & Girls The Doll That Evolves With Your Dreams Dreams a doll that tells females how to be a doll that evolves with your dreams exclusive perfection inclusive & updated dream Barbie lovers love to dream Young girls want to dream Barbie detractors allow their kids to dream a world of negative realism a world of hope & empowerment
- 49. A Message for Moms & Girls The Doll That Evolves With Your Dreams the doll that defends the dream, lets girls create their own stores for their dreams in a real world, and evolves with their mother’s dreams, too. the doll that evolves with you and defends your dreams.